Recent research indicates that the number of abortions increased in the first half of 2023 in most states where they were legal this year.
Data collected by the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that supports abortion access, gives the clearest picture up to now of where persons are looking for abortions in the U.S., greater than a year after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
The increases were especially pronounced in places that implemented policies to preserve abortion rights — reminiscent of Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois and Washington — in addition to in states like Kansas and Recent Mexico, which border states with abortion bans.
In Recent Mexico, the number of abortions from January to June greater than tripled in comparison with the same period in 2020 — the last year for which the Guttmacher Institute has comparable data. That is an indicator that individuals are crossing state lines to terminate pregnancies, said Isaac Maddow-Zimet, an information scientist at the Guttmacher Institute who helped conduct the research.
“The rise in a state like Recent Mexico might be primarily driven by travel from bordering states like Texas. That is something that we have actually heard anecdotally in the past, and I feel the scale of this change bears that out,” Maddow-Zimet said.
The numbers Maddow-Zimet’s team published are based on monthly estimates from a sample of abortion providers in each state and don’t include self-managed abortions — medication abortions performed outside of clinics, doctor’s offices or telehealth settings.
Based on the Guttmacher estimates, in Colorado — where abortion rights are guaranteed by state law — the number was up 89% in the first half of this year in comparison with the first half of 2020.
And in Illinois — which has enacted policies that protect abortion providers and patients who travel to receive abortions there — abortions were up 69%. An estimated 44,000 were performed in the first half of 2023, in comparison with greater than 26,000 in the first half of 2020.
“It already was kind of a bastion of access in the region before, and I feel it’s grow to be much more so,” Maddow-Zimet said.
After the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, the Alamo Women’s Clinic closed its abortion clinic in San Antonio and opened locations in Albuquerque, Recent Mexico, and Carbondale, Illinois. Andrea Gallegos, the clinics’ executive administrator, said each locations were busy straight away. She estimated that they each see 400 patients monthly.
Most out-of-state patients at the Recent Mexico location are from Texas, she said, while the Illinois location serves patients who travel from a greater variety of places.
“We strategically decided to open in southern Illinois because of the proximity to so many states that will likely have bans,” Gallegos said. “It’s common for us to have patients from nine different states in sooner or later because of that.”
Michele Landeau, the chief operating officer at Hope Clinic, an abortion provider in southern Illinois, said greater than 80% of the clinic’s patients come from states with abortion bans or restrictions. Around 15% or 20% should travel 12 or more hours, she added.
“Our volume has increased exponentially,” Landeau said. “Unfortunately, we aren’t capable of see one and all that calls us.”
In 2020, greater than 113,000 abortions were administered across the 13 states which have since enacted total abortion bans, in addition to Wisconsin, where many health care providers are hesitant to supply abortions because of an 1849 law criminalizing the practice. That was nearly 12% of the national total that year, in accordance with the Guttmacher Institute.
In the first few months of this year, just 14 abortions were reported in Texas.
Since June — the latest data included in the Guttmacher research — abortion bans or restrictions have also gone into effect in Indiana, North Carolina and South Carolina after having been held up in court. The consequences of those policies are usually not reflected in the report.
The Guttmacher researchers said they would wish more data to find out how the number of abortions has changed on a national scale, including estimates of self-managed abortions. Nonetheless, the number of abortions in the U.S. rose in 2019 and 2020, and state-level data suggests that the pattern continued in 2021.